ABSTRACT
This chapter serves as an introduction to the third section of the book, which is dedicated to microclimatic considerations in urban planning and design. It is devoted to a discussion of how our understanding of the urban microclimate may be applied in practice. 1 The question is not as simple as it seems, because an architect designing urban space must resolve numerous, often conflicting, demands that relate to diverse aspects of planning. These may include, for example, space requirements for traffic infrastructure or pressure by developers to maximize the economic return on expensive urban land. Furthermore, the architect should bear in mind that a sound design response may need to deal simultaneously with climatic stress on pedestrians and on buildings – and that responding to both might sometimes lead to contradictory requirements.
